Numbers

Many games employ a level of abstraction between the player and the character in the game. This often involves some kind of point assignment scheme. These points represent core statistics such as strength or agility, abilities such as “Sword Proficiency” or “Dwarven Language Skill” or meta-scores such as hitpoints or armor. Even games that have a high level of user interaction such as first person shooter games almost always employ something like a hitpoint score.

These numbers are useful because:

They provide a quantification of concepts that would be difficult to work with otherwise. This makes things easier on both the programmer/game and player. The game must represent the concepts as numbers in some way, and the player easily recognizes that a score of 2 in “Sword Proficiency” is greater (and more powerful) than a score of 1.

They provide a way to map user interaction onto a game character

They provide a mechanism for creating boundaries and barriers. Perhaps a character must have a score of 5 in Sword Proficiency before he can wield the Vorpal Blade or Important Plot NPC #28 will not talk to the character until they have more experience (level 3). Perhaps the character cannot even understand the NPC until he becomes more fluent in a certain language.